Evansville Civic Theater's 2012-2013 season opens Sept. 14

In what it is calling the "flashback season," Evansville Civic Theater will move ahead by looking back with its 2012-2013 lineup of drama, comedy, dramedy and musical theater

Christopher Tyner, the theater's managing. artistic director, chose recognizable shows that take place in the past, he said. They include a Southern-fried favorite, a Christmas chestnut set to music, a journaling journey into the 1960s, a familiar Korean War story and a roller-skating disco musical.

It all begins Sept. 14 with "Steel Magnolias," Robert Harling's snipping, curling, caressing dramedy of Southern sisterhood playing out in a small-town beauty salon. The show will run weekends through Sept. 30.

Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future will sing their gothic tale of a miser's holiday epiphany and redemption in the musical adaption by Alan Menken, Lynn Ahrens and Mike Ockrent of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." It will play weekends Nov. 30 through Dec. 16.

A son's quest to understand an entry in his father's journal takes him back to the cigarette and martini days of the 1960s in Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain," the flashback drama playing weekends Feb. 8 through 24, 2013. The same actors play characters from 1960 and their grown children in this decade-hopping family romance.

Hawkeye, Radar, Hot Lips Houlihan and the rest of the characters from "M*A*S*H," Richard Hooker's fictionalized memoir of doctors and nurses' lives in a Korean War field hospital, will play weekends April 5 through 21 next year. Tim Kelly's stage adaptation features the characters generations have come to know through Robert Altman's film version and from the long-running television series inspired by Hooker's book.

The subscription season will close with "Xanadu," the disco musical by Douglas Carter Beane, Jeff Lynne and John Farrar, playing weekends May 3 through 12. The young adult players in Civic's NEXTWAVE programwill be featured in this musical about the chaos that ensues when the Greek muse Kira visits a struggling artist in Los Angeles' Venice Beach in the 1980s. Songs include "Magic," "I'm Alive," "Evil Woman" and "Have You Never Been Mellow."

Curtain time will come a half-hour earlier next season for evening shows. All the main stage productions will play at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.

Season tickets will go on sale May 4. Subscriptions purchased before June 8 are $68, discounted to $62 for those 65 and older. After June 8, the price goes up $6 for the five-show package.

Concerts at Germania Maennerchor

Season subscribers will qualify for a discount on Civic Theatre's second Concert Series at Germania Maennerchor. The lineup will feature Tyner and Friends as "The Rat Pack" (July 13), LaNell Lucius in "West of Broadway" (Nov. 4), The Boat Monkeys (Jan. 18, 2013) and Mike Kelly as "The Irish Tenor" (March 8). Subscribers can purchase the series for $70, a discount of $10.

Underground at the Annex

Civic Theatre also will offer ticket packages for next season's "edgier, alternative shows" presented at 7 p.m. in its Washington Square Mall studio theater, in cooperation with directors for other community theater groups.

Civic's early-bird season subscribers can get tickets for all the shows for $32, saving $8.

Finally, subscribers can save $2 on tickets for Civic Theatre's summer production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," playing weekends July 20 through Aug. 5 at the Lincoln Amphitheatre at Lincoln State Park in Lincoln City, Ind.

For more on any of Civic Theatre's shows or packages, call the theater box office at 812-425-2800.